OPW CEO INTERVIEW -- June 21, 2005 -- Online dating pioneer Webdate offers 'webdating' video chat, web chat and mobile phone based dating...all for free. It's grown to 4 million members whilst maintaining a completely free membership model, much to the chagrin of it's competitors, Match.com, Yahoo Personals and American Singles. Mark Brooks, Editor of Online Personals Watch, interviews Abe Smilowitz, Webdate.com’s CEO and Founder.
Is webdate beyond 4 million users now?
Yes. We've had a consistent growth rate. Anywhere from 250 to 300 thousand new users a month. 60% is type in traffic from viral, from non-advertising referrals.
Why did you start webdate?
We started webdate to be the #1 online personals company in the world. We identified online dating as a hot industry and decided we wanted to participate and create the best online personals service on the net. We decided we would add the largest amount of users in the shortest amount of time by moving to a free model, and the rest is history...Now we're #5. We're the 5th largest online personals company (per Hitwise). Last year we were the fastest growing online personals company. We grew 800% where the industry average was 42%. The guys ahead of us are monsters and we've spent a fraction of what they've spent! What they spend in a month, we spend in a year. Some are spending in excess of $5 million a month. That's unbelievable! Probably some of the guys below us are spending several multiples of what we're spending...and we're still ahead of them. It's credit to word of mouth marketing and our user experience. We think users want a fast, simple, no frills, quick and easy communication oriented site. They don't want to have to jump through hoops. We're not overly complicated like other sites.
Was there a 'magic moment' for you when you were first developing webdate?
The magic moment for us occurred when we came up with the video dating idea. You can go to any online dating site and see fake pictures. Then you show up to a date and find your match is older than they looked...it's crazy! How do you get around the problem of fake pictures? It just seemed so 'not personal' to us. Online personals didn't give users much feel for a person's personality. Users can write down any horse crap, put up a fake picture and the person on the other side has no idea. Video dating, done properly just crushes that. It really gives users a feel for a person, not the profile, but the real person. They can interact! Enabling someone halfway round world to get a feel for someone's personality over the web, with pictures, and movement and voice. You can see if a woman is sexy, get a feel for her attitude, see if she's funny. You can pick all that up on video dating. When you're just reading a profile, staring at multiple-choice questions, just looking at words, those things don't speak to the soul as much. The way a person moves can say a lot about them. You can't pick up on body language from a profile.
How on earth can you justify making webdate free for so long?
Our justification is industry ranking. We've been able to build webdate to our #5 ranking in a very competitive industry. We have a high number of active users and significant market share now. Here's a scoop for you; we're looking to move to a premium services model in the very near future. But, we'll continue to be less expensive than any of our competitors because we feel everyone should be able to enjoy online dating. Part of our approach has been to extend online dating to all of society with webdate mobile. Minority groups are generally more mobile oriented. That's a totally different approach. Our mobile service is $3.99 a month. So, beat that! And our mobile users can interact with the entire 4 million person webdate user base. It's an inexpensive alternative to being on the website and it has most of the features of an online service. You can see pictures, browse profiles, we stand alone in the industry as far as mobile goes right now.
How does this compare with Match's mobile offering?
We've integrated the entire mobile aspect into the webdate. Match breaks it up into two sites. Ours is the only fully integrated service. Which is the future of mobile applications, fully integrated.
What will webdate look like 5 years from now?
It will be fully mobile. Everything you can do online, you'll be able to do on a cell phone, and that's what we're trying to do now.
What's the end goal? Do you want to be bigger then Match.com?
The end goal is to offer the best online personals service on the planet. If we're the biggest, great. Our philosophy is, if we build the very best product the users will come. But, it has to be the best integrated, have the best features, be the easiest to use, and be fully integrated with mobile and video. We're building the best mousetrap but not necessarily to beat Match.com in users. We think that we will beat them in users eventually, because our product is going to be better. The users will acknowledge that. Users will often join several sites when they start online dating, and then end up sticking with the one they like the best. We want to be that one. In order to do that we need to give them great combinations of features, ease of use and value...which means not charging them an arm and a leg for the service.
Does the public really care about mobile and video chat yet?
The video dating, absolutely! Over 50% of users have tried video dating. The video is here and it's here to stay. It's not pie in the sky or something for down the road. It's here now and it's only going to get bigger. As far as safety is concerned...We were thinking about safety two and a half years ago! Video dating allows people to go on first dates in the safety and security and comfort of their own homes...without putting them in uncomfortable or dangerous situations. They can get a sense of chemistry from the other users, hear their voice and look into their eyes before taking it to the real world. Mobile dating is still something that is not mature. There's no doubt it's where the future lies. There will always be online dating though. You can't completely duplicate online dating with a cell phone. There's not enough room, but there's no doubt mobile will play a huge role in the future. Our goal is to be the innovator and shape the way online dating progresses, with a mobile perspective. The companies offering it now will shape the industry down the road.
What does the future hold for webdate? Where will webdate be in two years time?
We'll be the best personals site to get in touch with the 'right person.' We're working to give our users as many options to communicate as possible in as time efficient a manner as possible. Users can see who's online, who's on video chat, who's new on the site, who's viewed their profile, who's emailed and IM'd them, who's network of friends others belong to. You shouldn't have to click five times to find what you want. You only have to click once on webdate. Everything users could possibly want is right there, laid out one click away from the home page. We're building the best online personals site and in two years we'll be at the top of the online dating rankings.
Mark Brooks: People, essentially, are the 'product' that online dating sites sell. Webdate has invested heavily to build a considerable member base, get people talking (hey it's free!), and offer some great next generation services. One to watch.
Dear Mr. Brooks:
Two important things to evaluate.
1) Did you ask the CEO if the company is profitable? If not when?
2) By 2007 or sooner the market will divide into two well-identified branches.
13-25 years old persons (teenagers) not interested in serious dating; they will use the service for fun. They are used to send a lot of traffic with emails, photos, videos, or simply stay in chat rooms for hours. They will need exclusive contents for members like blogs for members, recipes for cooking, songs in mp3 format at special prices, advice about leisure activities, entertainment, travel, holidays, music, movies, books, online magazine about lifestyles, etc. They will want to be 24hs a day online or pending of their cell phone / PDA. Each person will have its private TRUMAN SHOW . Everybody will be TRUMAN for 5,000 "friends" (CASUAL ACQUAINTANCES). Mobile / wireless services for that group will not be cheap, perhaps operators will charge a fixed rate plan, but not less than USD100 per month. Mobile applications will only complement but not replace On Line Dating / Social Networking Internet sites
AND
26-and more years old persons interested in serious dating.
They will need quality contacts (COMPATIBLE REAL PERSONS) like off line chains, reliability, code of ethics and legislation, which will protect them from felons, convicts, fake profiles, unsolicited offers, spyware, adware and other pest. They will know that "If any person does not pay for the service or does not want to pay for the service, he or she is not interested in serious dating, or is not interested in investing time and effort in building a new relationship with future in mind". They will pay for the service to avoid being hurt in their feelings by others. They know the difference between REAL FRIENDS from CASUAL ACQUAINTANCES and also the difference between COMMUNITY from MEAT MARKET. They will not be 24hs a day online or pending of their cell phone / PDA. Mobile / wireless services for that group will peak and decay because mobile dating is very time consuming, it could disturb at every moment.
Cordially,
Fernando Ardenghi
Buenos Aires
Argentina
[email protected]
Posted by: Fernando Ardenghi | Jun 21, 2005 at 05:25 PM
Now we're #5. We're the 5th largest online personals company (per Hitwise).
*************************
I checked today, and the number 5 position goes to www.venus123.com Venus123 is nothing but a 1 page front site for adware. Hitwise.com is very good at ranking popup spam/adware.
Webdate says they do 300k signups a month and 40% of that they are paying for. Assuming an average aquisition cost of $1.50 to $3/member they are spending 150k to $300,000/month + on marketing.
A previous news release (http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050427/daw036.html) stated that webdate only has 50% of its members in North America. This is important as most banner sites will only pay well for north american traffic. Most non north american members are unwilling to convert to paying members.
I would seem that webdate.com is caught between a rock and a hard place. The free dating model is proving to be a failure because operating costs seem to be between 200 to 500k/month and advertising revenue probably doen't exceed 30k/month + 150k/month from cell phones?
Posted by: Markus | Jun 21, 2005 at 06:57 PM
Free is not maintainable. You know the metrics. You have to run very lean to make advertising work. Webdate has high aspirations. Advertising income only will get them so far. They have invested to build a solid userbase. Credit to them for that.
Webdate has been biding their time and building a solid dating service chock full of people, with some solid features. One to watch.
Venus 123 has probably been driving traffic with email. A flash in the pan.
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&compare_sites=&y=t&q=&url=http://www.venus123.com
On further inspection, there was no specific name for the venus123.com domain name owner on internic. The contact's email was [email protected]. Huladirect is an email marketing company.
Posted by: Mark Brooks | Jun 21, 2005 at 10:40 PM
Free is maintainable, but webdates parent company is huge and i'm sure they are looking for huge returns.
Plentyoffish is larger then webdate, but doesn't get much press as the bulk of our membership is in canada.
Only websearch and alexa can rank global traffic of sites. http://ranking.websearch.com/SiteInfo.aspx?url=webdate.com http://ranking.websearch.com/SiteInfo.aspx?url=plentyoffish.com
I also noticed that venus123 is linking to sites with a parameter called "vendare" which i suspect is the adware/spyware company vendaregroup.com
30+ singles is paying $6.00 a email for first page registration, jdate is paying $4.85 thirty plus christians is paying $4.40 a email, true.com 4.25 and american singles 3.75. Add another 25% fee to affiliate network to that and you realize they are paying a LOT. I am curious to see how webdate plans to indroduce CHEAP payment options and compete with other sites. It would seem most sources of traffic are very expensive now.
Posted by: Markus | Jun 22, 2005 at 09:04 PM
I just want to mention that this is another phenomenal interview!
Posted by: Glenn Gasner | Jun 23, 2005 at 02:32 AM
Yes, Webdate invested in a big user base. But who is really inside it? Leaving an online personals system 100% free will only attract all the freaks and non-serious people.
Anyone disagree with this fact?
Posted by: Tim Gray | Jun 24, 2005 at 12:36 PM
Looks like Hitwise added a spam filter today, and webdate drops to position 15. Its good to see them try and clean up their ranking systems.
Believe it or not alexa and ranking.websearch.com are a far better indictor of who the top 10 dating sites are. Those ranking systems take into account pageviews+ unique visitors and they filter out popups for the most part. Sites like webdate spend hundreds a day to generate 10's of thousands of popups which pushes their ranking through the roof.
These latest changes by hitwise are moving them closer to having somewhat realistic rankings. I hope that comscore will make similar changes as their rankings measure nothing more then adware popup activity. (need only look at how they rank tickle)
Webdate plays up the hitwise numbers a lot in the media/press i wonder what the stratagy is now that they have been sent from #5 to #15.
Posted by: Markus | Jun 29, 2005 at 07:11 PM
WebDate is fine the way it is. Not everyone out there is perfect (I know I'm not), so why screen out the pepole some web executive sees as unfit. After all we are adults so let us decide wwhat is and isn't exceptable in mate. As far as only people who aren't serious looking for a mate on a free site this is just not true many people go there and find what they were looking for. Anyways I never saw any results with any pay dating site but with WebDate I found my husband. WebDate would be more popular than all the other sites if they publicly advertised more. WebDates biggest advertisement is word of mouth. WebDate is the best video/date/chat site for those who don't take everything so seriously. It is for real people not ones trying to sugar coat them selves to find a mate. In this day and age things are changing E-friends are every bit as meaningful as the friend you met in school or at work.
Posted by: kendracr | Aug 21, 2005 at 09:34 PM
I finally left that site due to poor customer service. Not sure how they can be ranked anything with members leaving all the time. Apparently a hack has made the site unbearable for alot of people. The inablility to get rid of abusive chatters has rendered webdate useless.
Posted by: Tammy | Apr 04, 2007 at 09:10 AM
The problem with Webdate is the neglect by those that own it. If they would take notice of their userbase again, and not ignore those that would like to help, they might again make themselves viable. Their focus has totally moved away from this site, which is a shame. There is a slight pickup in the users now that they are free again, but they also removed all the checks as a cost savings. Hey guys, listen to your userbase. We'd like to help, you just won't let us!
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Posted by: Cholada | Oct 31, 2007 at 06:45 PM
Interesting read, where are these guys in the ranks now?
POF is still at the top of the game in their free format I know that much.
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